Have you ever come across a quiz like this before? It’s called ” target=”_blank”>The Ultimate Social Media Marketers’ Quiz, and it was designed to promote brand engagement.
On the social media front, it did well. As of January 9th, it received about 8,000 social shares. 5,000 people looked at it. Did you notice anything weird about that? It got more shares than views. Moreover, almost no one linked to it from other domains.
This makes it very unlikely that the quiz actually drove website traffic. That also means few conversions. So great idea, but what tangible effects did it actually achieve for their brand?
If they had produced content which generated fewer shares (say 4,000), but nearly 1,000 domains linked to the content, would that not be more worthwhile?
I would argue that viable financial content marketing should veer towards the latter, not the former. Why? Because social shares AND links are together more likely to drive traffic, and build site authority.
It is getting harder to do content marketing well. A few months ago, the American Marketing Association published research (https://www.ama.org/publications/eNewsletters/MarketingInsightsNewsletter/Pages/marketers-blogging-800-percent-more-getting-nearly-100-percent-fewer-shares.aspx) which shows marketers are blogging 800% more, but getting 100% fewer social shares.
This is likely caused by the exponential increase in content growth, which is all trying to attract attention. Consider for a moment that, on WordPress, over 70m blog posts are published EACH MONTH.
What does this mean for your financial content marketing?
It’s bad news. No longer can you just publish a post and expect people to stumble across it. That’s what it means.
How can you get around this? This is key. Your financial content marketing cannot simply focus on what content you should produce. You must also consider why and how it will be amplified before you even get to work on it.
How will your prospects and audience find it? Why would people post it on their social networks? Why would people point links to it?
The key takeaway here is that whilst social shares are important, they don’t necessarily lead to high links. Your financial content marketing needs to build links. So what kind of content does this?
According to Buzzsumo, there are five key content formats which achieve this:
- Strong political or opinion posts.
- Content which provides practical insights, and which leverages a trending topic.
- Original insights and research pieces.
- Content which answers common questions (e.g. “What is …?”)
- Authoritative news articles on upcoming/new developments or products.
So what’s the bottom line? Go for social shares, absolutely. However, make sure your financial content marketing also has an amplification plan. Social shares and amplification are not the same thing. Shares alone are insufficient. Create content which attracts both shares AND links.
